


Phantom Pains

by athenasdragon



Series: athenasdragon "official" dragon age canon [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Heavy Angst, Major Character Injury, Psychological Trauma, Trespasser DLC, Trespasser Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-13
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2019-02-01 16:48:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12708951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athenasdragon/pseuds/athenasdragon
Summary: "Rena trips as she stumbles through the final Eluvian. Her toe catches on the lip of the frame and she lands hard on the stone floor of the Winter Palace. Her teeth clack together as her chin catches her full weight and the breath all goes out of her.Distantly, she can hear voices—Varric kneeling beside her, his tone worried, and Dorian and Bull talking to someone in front of her—but she’s too full of feeling to understand what they’re saying. Her left arm aches, deep in the bone, and she swears she can still feel the anchor sparking. She tries to flex her fingers and feels only a twinge above her elbow."In which Rena Trevelyan is physically and psychologically abused during the events of Trespasser.





	Phantom Pains

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this during a long period of severe illness that just made me want to scream all the time, so every time I felt like I wanted to knock someone's teeth in I just channeled that into this fic instead. I hope you all enjoy this angst fest!

Rena trips as she stumbles through the final Eluvian. Her toe catches on the lip of the frame and she lands hard on the stone floor of the Winter Palace, her right arm too firmly clutching the stump of her left to catch her. Her teeth clack together as her chin catches her full weight and the breath all goes out of her.

Distantly, she can hear voices—Varric kneeling beside her, his tone worried, and Dorian and Bull talking to someone in front of her—but she’s too full of feeling to understand what they’re saying. Her left arm aches, deep in the bone, and she swears she can still feel the anchor sparking; she can feel where the stump ends, but lower, there’s a stabbing, burning pain. She tries to flex her fingers and feels only a twinge above her elbow. Her chin hurts, her teethe ache, her mouth is filling with blood. Her lungs are starting to protest their lack of air. Her legs are bruised, weary, and at least one toe is certainly broken. Every inch of her body is in pain.

A warm hand comes to rest on her shoulder and someone else is speaking. Vivienne? Magic crackles out from the hand and air floods back into Rena’s lungs as bones begin to knit back together and her jaw snaps into place.

The first thing she can hear clearly is a hoarse, ear-splitting scream, which stops as soon as her lungs are empty again. Like a starving man whose stomach is no longer accustomed to food, she can only gasp in a fraction of her breath before it’s expelled again in an anguished shriek. Blood spatters out of her mouth and onto the floor and she manages to prop herself up on her right arm, but the rational part of her mind can only watch from a long way away as she gasps and screams, gasps and screams.

Several pairs of shoes pace back and forth before her face, but she can’t raise her gaze from the tears now mingling with the pool of blood on the floor.

The magic keeps doing its work, and the pain gets worse before it gets better. Several ribs crack back to their original positions with an explosive pain. The bleeding sinew at the end of her left arm begins to rearrange and she can feel it sliding wetly against itself—the sensation would be plenty to make her vomit if there weren’t so many others vying for her attention. Mercifully, someone lifts her shield from her back while she screams and writhes, and her breath starts to come a little easier.

As her breathing becomes deeper and there are longer pauses between her screams, Rena’s mind returns to her body, and suddenly she’s aware of more than just her own brokenness. She’s angry. Furious. She trusted Solas, though they had never been particularly close, and he had betrayed her—and she had never suspected a thing.

She clenches her remaining fist and spits the rest of the blood from her mouth. Her anger subsides slightly to make room for waves and waves of fear she only now has time to feel, both for herself and her companions. She clamps her mouth tight to stem another scream and instead lets out a trembling breath through her nose. Relief, pain, terror, rage, exhaustion—

Voices. There are people with her.

Gingerly, she shifts her weight back until she is upright. Varric kneels on her right, Vivienne on her left, visibly drained after the massive healing she’s just performed. Most of her companions from the Inquisition stand in the hallway before her, their blank expressions of shock illuminated by flickering torchlight. Cassandra’s mouth is open and tears run freely down her face. Blackwall has his arms crossed, eyes averted. No one says anything for a long moment, and Rena lets her gaze slide over each of their faces, feeling miles away from all of them.

Then there’s a clatter behind them and her advisors come running around the corner. Josephine gasps at the first sight of blood. “Inquisitor, we were informed that you would be returning, we wanted—” Something makes her fall silent—the blood and tears streaming down Rena’s face, her vacant expression, the tense stances of everyone present, it’s hard to be sure—just in time for Leliana to appear, her white robes perfectly ordered. Her mouth thins as she takes in the scene.

Cullen is the last to round the corner, and he keeps going, pushing past Leliana, Josephine, Cassandra, until he can stumble forward and crouch before Rena.

Rena looks at him. His face sparks something in her chest, but it’s buried deep, so she just blinks slowly and takes another ragged breath.

Cullen seems too scared to touch her; his hands hover over her face, her shoulders, her arm, back to her face, before he eventually settles on resting his gloved hand against her cheek. “Rena? What happened? Your arm—are you all right?”

The seam of his glove is the final sensation that tips the balance and Rena jerks away from him. “Don’t touch me,” she says, and though her voice is weak she means it. There’s something she should be doing with her face—an expression, or an explanation—but she can’t summon it, and Cullen’s surprised pain is too much to take in, so she just looks at the floor.

“What can I do?” he asks softly, and she shakes her head.

“You can’t do anything. It’s not something that can be fixed.” Her hand drifts back to the stump of her left arm. The mark is gone, but she can still feel her hand, and it _hurts_. Vivienne’s healing did nothing to ease the phantom pains.

“It was Solas,” Varric growls beside her. “He took the mark, he was behind everything.”

While her friend tells the story with unusually terse language, Rena keeps watching the stone before her. It stares back. Smooth, unyielding, eternal. She remembers a story from her childhood about a wandering princess cursed and turned to stone, and she thinks about spending eternity as a cool, untouched observer. Not a bad fate.

Varric finishes speaking and they all wait in silence. Rena lifts her left arm, examines it; she wonders how she can still feel her hand so perfectly when it’s clearly no longer there. She can still feel the mark tearing her skin. Still feel the tightness of the scar at the base of her thumb. Still feel the—

“The ring,” she says out loud, and turns to look back at Cullen. He quickly looks up from her arm to her face, his expression anguished. “Cullen, the ring was on my left hand. I lost it. I lost the ring.”

And it’s the smallest thing, of course. She has enough gold now to replace the little engagement band a hundred times over. But she didn’t even think to remove it before going into battle, even as the mark worsened, and now it’s missing. The world is falling down around her ears and she’s lost her ring.

She can’t help but laugh. It’s sharp, unpleasant laughter, just as involuntary as her screams had been, head thrown back to let it force itself up her throat, too loud and too high and running together without breath. Somewhere in the group before her Rena’s aware of Cole taking a step back and Blackwall swearing under his breath but the sound keeps pouring out of her.

Nothing is funny. Nothing will ever be funny. But still she laughs.

She looks to Cullen, expecting him to laugh, too, but his face is frozen in perfect horror. His hands are still half-outstretched but unwilling to touch her after her rejection. Without Rena’s permission her face crumples and her laughter turns to sobs.

All she wants is to be held, but she thinks the feeling of it might be too much still, so instead she shakes and shakes and gasps and watches the tremors in Cullen’s hands.

“Can’t we do something for her?” Varric murmurs. “The poor girl’s in shock.”

“I think I can manage something,” Dorian says, and Rena flinches as a pair of hands come to rest on her shoulders. The sensation fades away, as does everything else, as her eyes slide shut and her body goes limp.

* * *

 

When she’s next aware of herself, Rena is in bed. The blankets are heavy enough to exert a slight pressure where they’re folded over her chest, and the sensation is soothing. The room is light and airy and open.

She blinks the sleep from her eyes and rolls her head to the right. The motion shifts her body enough to remind her of the absence of her arm, and a pang of dismay hits her, but otherwise she feels whole. Healed. Even the phantom sensations have receded, and she’s thankful; without every injury clamoring for attention, her head feels clearer.

Blinking again, she manages to focus on the figure slumped in the chair beside her bed. It’s Cullen, his mouth open slightly, his expression slack with sleep.

Rena’s first thought is to let him sleep—the dark circles under his eyes tell her he needs it. Her second thought is that her mouth is dry like sand and there’s no one else around to ask for water.

“Cullen?” Her voice is hoarser than she’d hope, and her throat is still sore from yelling.

He shifts sleepily in the chair then starts upright when he sees that she’s awake. “Rena? Are you—how are you feeling?”

“I don’t know.” She wriggles back a bit and he helps her prop herself up against her pillow. As much as she enjoys the blankets, she has to push them back to examine her arm. There are no scars; her skin is smooth where the stump ends just above her elbow. She passes her right hand over it and chews her lip. “Everything still feels disjointed, like it’s not real. I don’t know. I always thought I might get injured in battle, but this seems _wrong_. It’s just gone.”

Cullen takes a deep breath, and his words sound rehearsed when they do come. “It might take you a while to adjust, but I’m here for whatever you need.”

“Water?”

“Yes—yes, of course. Hold on.” He goes to the corner of the room, where there is a little table that Rena hadn’t noticed. There’s a carafe of water standing next to a bowl of something steaming and a chunk of bread. It looks appetizing enough, but Rena isn’t hungry yet. It feels as though everything in her core has been fused into a solid mass: no room for food. When Cullen returns with a goblet and presses it into her hand, she even doubts her ability to drink, but once the cool water touches her lips she can’t stop herself from gulping every last bit of it down.

Cullen returns to his chair and watches her seriously. When she’s finished drinking and she settles back against her pillows, he leans forward, pauses, and speaks again. “Rena, I’m so sorry. I’m _so_ sorry.”

“This—I don’t have the energy for this right now.” She doesn’t have the energy for anything. Despite her minute of clarity, the numbness from before is beginning to return, and this time it’s accompanied by bone-crushing exhaustion. The weight of remembering has settled heavy on her chest and she knows the only escape will be unconsciousness.

Cullen looks like he wants to say more, and she Rena can’t blame him. There’s a lot to discuss. He must be worried, too—if half of what she remembers is right, he has good reason to be. Instead he blinks, frowns, and seems to push it away. He exhales through his nose and his expression becomes softer, tender. Rena wants to reach out and stroke his cheek, but she can’t will her hand to move, so instead she twitches her mouth into a momentary smile, which he matches. Neither is genuine.

“I love you. Get all the rest you can—I’ll be here.”

“Love you too.” A low burning is building in her left hand. The absence of it is painful, even though she should be free of the mark now. She isn’t. She can never be truly free of it.

She can feel her forehead creasing in consternation and Cullen’s eyes flick up to it. “Rena? Sleep.”

And she obeys.


End file.
